I haven’t seen this yet, despite my having tried last week. Rod’s first review really intrigued me; James, noting the salient absence of modern art from the movie’s credit scenes, further interested me. Now, Rod has linked to and posted an excerpt from an interview with Andrew Stanton, who directed the film, and I really want to see this film. I include one short excerpt, also cited by Rod; read Rod’s thoughts here, and the whole interview here.

WORLD: The depiction of humanity is pretty stark in this movie.

STANTON: Well, when I started outlining humanity in the story, I asked myself: What if everything you needed to survive–health care, food–was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect–nobody’s reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn’t it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.